‘Yes, Tina, many are just as wicked. I often have very wicked feelings, and am tempted to do wrong things; but then my body is stronger than yours, and I can hide my feelings and resist them better. They do not master me so. You have seen the little birds when they are very young and just begin to fly, how all their feathers are ruffled when they are frightened or angry; they have no power over themselves left, and might fall into a pit from mere fright. You were like one of those little birds. Your sorrow and suffering had taken such hold of you, you hardly knew what you did.’ He would not speak long. Lest he should tire her, and oppress her with too many thoughts. Long pauses seemed needful for her before she could concentrate her feelings in short words. ‘But when I meant to do it,’ was the next thing she whispered, ‘it was as bad as if I had done it.’ ‘No, my Tina,’ answered Maynard slowly, waiting a little between each sentence; ‘we mean to do wicked things that we never could do, just as we mean to do good or clever things that we never could do. Our thoughts are often worse than we are, just as they are often better than we are. And God sees us as we are altogether, not in separate feelings or actions, as our fellow-men see us. We are always doing each other injustice, and thinking better or worse of each other than we deserve, because we only hear and see separate words and actions. We don’t see each other’s whole nature. But God sees that you could not have committed that crime.’ Caterina shook her head slowly, and was silent. After a while,--‘I don’t know,’ she said; ‘I seemed to see him coming towards me, just as he would really have looked, and I meant--I meant to do it.’ ‘But when you saw him--tell me how it was, Tina?’ ‘I saw him lying on the ground and thought he was ill. I don’t know how it was then; I forgot everything. I knelt down and spoke to him, and--and he took no notice of me, and his eyes were fixed, and I began to think he was dead.’ ‘And you have never felt angry since?’ ‘O no, no; it is I who have been more wicked than any one; it is I who have been wrong all through.’ ‘No, Tina; the fault has not all been yours; _he_ was wrong; he gave you provocation. And wrong makes wrong. When people use us ill, we can hardly help having ill feeling towards them. But that second wrong is more excusable. I am more sinful than you, Tina; I have often had very bad feelings towards Captain Wybrow; and if he had provoked me as he did you, I should perhaps have done something more wicked.’ ‘O, it was not so wrong in him; he didn’t know how he hurt me. How was it likely he could love me as I loved him? And how could he marry a poor little thing like me?’ Maynard made no reply to this, and there was again silence, till Tina said, ‘Then I was so deceitful; they didn’t know how wicked I was. Padroncello didn’t know; his good little monkey he used to call me; and if he had known, O how naughty he would have thought me!’